Beautiful Skyrim Weather
by Cinis
Summary: After falling down one waterfall too many, a battered and bruised Dragonborn confronts the Forgotten Vale with Serana at her side. If Cassandra can avoid freezing, and Serana can avoid starving, and they can both avoid falmer arrows and dragons, Auriel's Bow will be worth it. Hopefully.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This was inspired by a friend arguing with me that Skyrim doesn't have enough characterization for the easy writing of engaging fanfic. We ended up with a bet, and this was my contribution. At the time, I had been reading Quietus by Liisa Vatanen (which you should go read because it's amazing) and I was like, "I wish I could write something that awesome." What I ended up with was not that awesome, because seriously, not sure anything could be, but it is what it is.

This is the first of three chapters.

Disclaimer: Not my characters, not my world. Also, some lines of dialogue are quotes from the game.

Beautiful Skyrim Weather – Chapter One

* * *

"This must be that beautiful Skyrim weather I've always heard about." Serana's voice could hardly be heard over the howling wind.

Shivering, Cassandra hugged herself and shoved her frozen fingers under the equally frozen armpits of her ebony armor. It didn't actually help; her fingers were sheathed in plate gauntlets – it was mostly an instinct. Not for the first time, the Imperial woman caught herself wishing she'd never left Cyrodiil. "Of course the vampire would think the blizzard at noon was beautiful weather."

Serana brushed snow off of herself. "I'm no fan of the sun, but it would be better than this." She spat out a clump of snow. "If I'm not careful, I'll be snowed in just standing here."

Cassandra retreated back into the cave behind them. "I'd rather be snowed in than freeze to death. We'll just have to wait for the blizzard to pass. I could spend the entire afternoon shouting at it and nothing would happen. Your father can't end the world without the bow, and he won't ever get the bow if we never make it to the end of this pilgrimage." She gently set down the ceremonial ewer onto the cave floor and much less gently collapsed next to it. Every inch of her body ached. Falling down a waterfall was like being trampled by a mammoth, except that mammoths weren't normally accompanied by giant spiders clawing at your face. Uhg. Spiders. Serana's entire bag, Cassandra's bow, and Azura knew how much else had been broken or lost in the headlong tumble.

"If my mother had buried me under a pile of snow instead of sealing me in a box in the middle of a magic puzzle in a hole in the ground, my father would still be looking for me," said Serana. She sat down facing the Dragonborn and began picking snow out from where it had fallen down the front of her Volkihar armor.

From the safety of her full ebony helm, Cassandra rolled her eyes. Calling Volkihar armor "armor" was more than a smidge generous; it was Volkihar armor because only a powerful pure blooded vampire could afford to climb through a glacial crevice filled with feral falmar while wearing a silk and lambskin outfit that left so much exposed. Serana was a vampire for Talos' sake, there was no reason for her to have a window cut out over her chest. Except, well, that reason. Cassandra wasn't complaining about the design, just contemplating it.

"You're staring," said Serana.

"No I'm not," Cassandra replied immediately.

"Yes, you are, you rolled your eyes at me and then you started staring at my chest. That helmet makes your face dark, not invisible."

Heat rushed to the Dragonborn's cheeks and she wondered if the vampire could see that too. "I was just thinking. And staring into space. And you happened to put your chest there."

Was the vampire mad? Pleased with herself? It was so hard to tell through the sarcastic drawl. Cassandra liked to think of Serana as a friend, but deciphering where she herself stood with the other woman was difficult. Serana had been truly grateful for being released from her prison, which was a pleasant change of pace from the jarls' dismissive thanks for saving their holds from utter ruin ("yes, yes, here is the bounty for slaying the dragon, now could you please get out of my way?"). Serana seemed friendly, trusting, sincere. Cassandra wanted Serana to like her. But Cassandra remembered when they met ("I was expecting someone like me, at least"), and more than once she'd looked up and met Serana's eyes on her and felt less like a comrade and more like dinner. It had been happening more often lately, and the Dragonborn didn't like it.

"Oh? Then what were you thinking about?" And there it was. The dinner look. Serana's eyes seemed to be boring a hole into Cassandra's neck, covered though it was by armor. Perhaps she should invest in a leather gorget to go under all the ebony.

"Not," Cassandra began, "about your chest. Or the way your armor leaves your chest very exposed and vulnerable to falmer arrows and sun. I was thinking about other things." Weakly, she grasped for what other things she might have been thinking about. She could have been thinking about Serana's full lips. Or her hips. Or... "I was thinking about how we're going to find the other wayshrines down in the valley."

"If a snow elf pilgrim with a glorified bucket full of water can do it, I think we'll manage."

"It's not a bucket, it's an ewer. A ceremonial ewer of Auri-El."

This time it was Serana's turn to roll her eyes. "So it's a fancy bucket of some old god. It's still a bucket."

"Akatosh," Cassandra said. She was suddenly acutely aware of the weight of the amulet of Talos in her pocket. The gods were the gods. Serana's religious avoidance of temples bothered her. But she didn't feel it was her place to lecture the far older woman.

Serana shrugged. "Rest. I'll take first watch."

* * *

It was late evening by the time the blizzard calmed. Outside of the cave and the slope down to the valley floor was blanketed in a thick snow that made walking slow and difficult. Thankfully though, the valley floor itself was low enough to have been sheltered and there were a few scraggly trees that had blocked the worst of the weather and left a small path covered in only a thin layer of snow. Here and there, glowing gleamblossom flowers poked up from under the white, throwing off just enough light to make everything else that much darker.

Cassandra lit a torch and held it aloft. The stars were bright and the moon was in the sky – somewhere. The tall peaks surrounding them blocked out most of the light. "I'm not sure where we go from here and I can't see so you'll have to keep your eyes open for the first wayshrine." She glanced around, but all she could see were long shadows. Hopefully they weren't long shadows hiding vale sabre cats. Cassandra hoped that the sickly green stripes on their pelts would give them away before they could get close. All it would take was one of them to knock the ewer out of her grasp and spill the water everywhere.

"Your life would be so much easier if you could see in the dark," said Serana.

"Tried it once, didn't like it," Cassandra mumbled.

"Wait, what was that?"

"Huh?"

"You said you tried seeing in the dark once. You were a vampire?"

Cassandra's heart skipped a beat. "No! That wasn't what I meant. I was never- not that there's anything wrong with being a vampire."

Serana's eyes narrowed. "Because there's not?"

"Because there's not," Cassandra repeated back. Serana was looking at her with the dinner eyes again, and it was unnerving to say the least.

"Are you sure you're a member of the Dawnguard?" Serana asked mildly.

"So I have a little more life experience than Isran. Is there something wrong with that?" Cassandra raised her torch a little higher and took a few steps forward, squinting into the dark. "I'm not a vampire hunter, I'm the Dragonborn. I didn't join the Dawnguard to kill people, I joined to help people."

Serana humphed. "You're a very queer mortal. The wayshrine is that way." She pointed in almost the opposite direction from where Cassanrda was walking. "I can see the sun disc sticking out of the ground."

"Great," Cassandra said. "That's one down." She spun on her heel and began to tramp through the snow in the direction Serana had indicated. "I wonder how much water I need to add to the ewer? It could get heavy after another four dips. Do you think the path was better marked when-"

"Cassandra, watch out!"

The sabre cat came out of the tree and landed across Cassandra's neck. The ewer went flying out of her hands. It hit the ground on its side and rolled. Serana dived for it, sending up a spray of freshly fallen snow where she slid across the earth. The torch was also dropped, but it didn't receive a rescue like the ewer and, extinguished by the snow, it rolled away into the night.

A few feet away, Cassandra flailed, trying to catch hold of the sabre cat and pull it off of her face. The half-starved predator had gotten one of its paws jammed into the narrow opening of her ebony helm and no amount of tugging could dislodge it. Inside the helm, Cassandra grit her teeth as the animal's claws raked across her nose and pushed her face as far back as the helm would let her. With one hand she grabbed hold of the cat's shoulder and pushed as hard as she could while she groped for the dagger at her side with her other hand. The beast's jaws latched around her arm, but its teeth shattered on her ebony gauntlet. Finally Cassandra managed to draw her dagger. Again and again she stabbed blindly until the animal collapsed on top of her.

Cassandra let out a great sigh of relief. And then she tried to get up. And then she tried again. And then she gave up. The combined weight of her armor and the sabre cat was too much. "Serana?" she called.

"Hang on," was the response. Serana picked up the corpse of the animal but the paw was still caught in Cassandra's helm. She dropped the sabre cat back down. "I need to cut it loose."

When Serana finally got the cat off and the paw removed, Cassandra thought she was going to suffocate from the smell of wet fur. Coughing and choking, she sat up and pulled her helm off. "Ewer?"

Serana held up the initiate's ewer and turned it upside down. Nothing came out.

Cassandra swore. "We'll have to go back to the cave..." Her words trailed off when she noticed the vampire was staring at her unblinkingly. And smiling.

"I've spent enough time underground myself, but if you want to go back, I'm right behind you," Serana said hollowly.

"Of course we have to go back," said the Dragonborn. "The water spilled, we need to get more from the first wayshrine. Why are you staring at me like that?"

Serana shook her head violently and blinked her eyes several times. "The water is fine. It froze to the bottom of the ewer. I – I'm sorry. Your face, I just..."

"What about my face?" Cassandra lifted a gauntleted hand to her face, but when her fingers touched her mangled nose she hissed in pain. "Oh. How bad is it?"

"It's bad," Serana said. She took a step back, then another. She swallowed hard. "Perhaps you should fix that."

"Right," Cassandra mumbled. She raised her hand to her face again and focused. A faint yellow-white light enveloped her fingers and nose. She hardly ever used magicka and it showed every time she tried to cast a spell. Restoration was practically the only school she was passable with. When she took her hand away again, the deep gashes across her face had scabbed over, though they still oozed a little around the edges. Hopefully it would be enough to prevent infection. They would scar eventually, but Cassandra had dragged her body through so much that a few more scars hardly mattered. "Is that better?"

"No, your face is still covered in blood. But I'll be fine. If you could just keep your distance until it dries?"

Cassandra nodded and put her helm back on. It stank like cat and blood, but not wearing it was risking her life. "Which way was it to the wayshrine?" Her torch was gone, never to return. Peering out from inside the ebony helmet, she could make out dim shadows. She assumed the moving humanoid shadow was Serana.

The rest of the walk to the second wayshrine was thankfully uneventful and the women passed the time with small talk about the probability of more sabre cat attacks. The conclusion was: low, except for when it would happen. Although Cassandra suggested that they stop there at the shrine for the night and set up camp, Serana insisted that they press on. She could see perfectly well and could guide them. They had no time to waste.

"You may be nocturnal, but I'm not," Cassandra argued. "I can't see. Look at what happened with the sabre cat. The world will still be there to be saved tomorrow. I should know. We don't even know how far it is to the next wayshrine."

"Don't lecture me on patience." Serana's tone was as cold as the Skyrim weather she loved so much. She took a deep breath and crossed her arms over her chest before continuing. "Look. Every minute we stand here arguing, you look tastier and tastier. So can we please just get moving?"

"No," said Cassandra. "No we can't. I already told you, I can't see anything. If we try to press on now, we're one ambush away from it not mattering how hungry you are. Why is this a problem now? It's never been a problem when we traveled before."

"The Volikhar court has a way of preserving blood as a potion. It tastes off, but it's the same as feeding normally. All of mine were in my bag."

Cassandra was silent. She'd known the vampire was surviving off of bottled blood, but she hadn't thought enough to realize that when Serana's bag was lost in the long fall down the waterfalls all the vampire's food went with it. Gods damn it all. Serana had even warned her about the rotting rope and plank bridge. "This changes things," the Dragonborn said slowly. "How long do you have?" She moved to pinch the bridge of her nose in frustration and then hissed when she brushed up against her still unhealed wound.

Serana shrugged. "Before I starve or before I maul you?"

"Both."

"I'm not sure. A few days maybe. I don't want to find out."

Cassandra grimaced. Without seeing the valley in the light and from a mountaintop, it was impossible to know how long it was, but she suspected it was more than a few days journey to the end – and the end was almost inevitably where the last wayshrine would be. They could try to turn around and head back, but that meant going up at least two waterfalls while fighting off spiders and falmer. The walls of the valley were high enough and the location remote enough that any calls for help wouldn't reach the intended ears. She couldn't even summon Arvak – something about the place was stopping the spell. The only way out was through. "Let's get moving then. Do you know where we should go next?"

Serana stood up and brushed snow off of herself. "There's a stone arch over there. I saw another one on our way here. I think they're path markers of some sort."

They passed through arch after arch, though Cassandra could hardly see them. She imagined that once upon a time, when the path had still been traveled by snow elves on pilgrimage, the stone structures would have been magnificent. She was busy daydreaming about what the monuments might have once looked like when Serana's voice interrupted her thoughts.

"I'm sorry if I was short with you," she said.

Cassandra shook her head. "You had every right to be. I was being stubborn and you had a good reason for wanting to travel now. If we travel at night I'm a worse fighter, if we travel by day you're worse – I was just being selfish. If you hadn't snapped at me, I'd still be insisting we sit and twiddle our thumbs back there."

"Thank you for understanding then."

The crumbling arches lead the two women up a path that went through a low pass in the side of the valley wall and into another vale. A nest of spiders attacked them on the way to the crest of the hill, but with Serana in the lead they had enough of a warning to set down the ewer carefully before quickly dispatching the arachnids. Frostbite spiders were everywhere in Skyrim, but they were extremely fragile and even the larger ones only took one or two solid hits to kill. In the distance, a waterfall rumbled.

The Dragonborn was absentmindedly wiping slimey spider gore from her sword when they reached the crest of the ridge. Serana stopped abruptly and Cassandra, only half paying attention to where she was going, barely stopped in time to keep from knocking the vampire down. "What is it?" Cassandra demanded. "Is there something wrong up ahead?"

Serana shook her head. "Just… come here. Look at this."

Hesitant, Cassandra shuffled forward and peered around the female vampire. Her jaw dropped at what she saw in the next valley. They had climbed far enough out of the vale that the stars and moon bathed the world in a pale light, and that light glittered off of a hundred thousand droplets of water, frozen in mid motion as they cascaded down from a great lake atop a plateau. Great plumes of ice hung suspended in the air, and beneath them more plumes of ice, and beneath those still-running water dropped the hundred feet or more to the valley floor.

"This is the kind of thing I love seeing…" Serana mumbled. "Makes everything else worth it."

Cassandra wanted to make some sarcastic comment about Harkon and his relative importance to an ice sculpture, but the words wouldn't leave her mouth. Instead, she just stood quietly by Serana's side, awestruck by the natural wonder.

They stood like that for some time, long enough that, when Cassandra remembered how bitterly cold it was to stand in the wind atop a hill, the sun too slow in warming the horizon. Grumbling, Serana put up her hood. "We should go… It's your turn to squint at things in the distance."

Cassandra nodded. "I think I see the next wayshrine over there, to the south. It's on a little bit of a cliff." The Dragonborn lead them down from the pass and then alongside the icy river. Bit by bit, the sun continued to rise, casting its rays into the enormous ice crystals of the frozen cascade and turning them all empyreal hues of red and gold.

As the Dragonborn walked, she was wrapped up in her thoughts. If they traveled nonstop for the entire day, they would have to rest at nightfall. There was no way to avoid it. Pressing on while exhausted was more dangerous than losing time sleeping. And the farther they went without stopping, the worse it would be for whoever kept first watch. Did she even want Serana keeping watch though? Vampires were known to prey on sleeping victims and- and Serana was a trustworthy companion and Cassandra had no business suspecting her of anything. But the sooner they rested, the better Cassandra would feel. About everything.

"Cassandra, we're here."

Cassandra snapped out of her thoughts in time to hear the last of the ghostly prelate's words. She suspected though, that if she'd continued to stand there, he would have repeated himself. The prelate's existence was at once a tribute to his god's power and a desolate reminder of how little power that god still had.

"-to honor the mantras of Auri-El and fill your vessel with His enlightenment?"

"Yes," said the Dragonborn, almost as mechanically as the prelate. In a hundred thousand years, would the temples of the Nine be nothing more than lonely ruins for adventurers? The amulet of Talos felt heavy in her pocket.

"Auri-El bless you, child. For you are a step closer to the Inner Sanctum and everlasting wisdom."

Closer to the Inner Sanctum, maybe, but Cassandra had heard too many promises of wisdom and power to put much stock in this one. The prelate cast his spell and the wayshrine rose up out of the ground. Cassandra dutifully dipped the ewer in the basin and added a cupful of water to the ice at the bottom of the container. Hopefully, she turned to the ghost and asked, "Which way to the next wayshrine?"

"May Auri-El's warmth imbue your body with strength."

"Is that a riddle or directions?" Cassandra asked.

"May Auri-El's warmth imbue your body with strength."

"We should cross the river and head north," said Serana. "The only thing to the south is another waterfall. I think I've had enough of waterfalls for the time being."

"May Auri-El's war-

"Shut up!" Cassandra yelled at the ghost. To her surprise, it obliged. "Okay, let's go north. If I ever try to jump off of a waterfall, you're free to stop me, with force if necessary." Following her own instructions, she began to walk toward the horizon where several large ice sheets formed a bridge over the water.

"You should be careful what you ask for," Serana said.

Cassandra laughed. "If only I'd learned that lesson before I came to Skyrim."

"What do you mean by that?" Serana asked. "I've told you a lot about my family. You've said almost nothing about yourself."

"There's not much to say," Cassandra said. "I'm the Dragonborn. I go from hold to hold killing dragons, fishing cats out of trees for small children, and finding family heirlooms peasants dropped while exploring Nordic ruins a hundred miles or more from their town."

"But you're more than that," said Serana.

"I have a few other titles," Cassandra said with a shrug. "Most of them earned by killing people."

"No doubt they were people who deserved to die," said Serana – an opinion stated like a fact.

"Not all of them," replied Cassandra. "Some of them were… just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Skyrim is a bad place for peace." She hoped Serana would get the hint and drop the conversation. She'd always respected the vampire's 'I'm not having this conversation with you,' so why couldn't Serana do the same?

"I have a hard time believing you'd kill innocents. You spend your free time giving gold to beggars and playing tag with orphans. Or are you doing that for redemption?"

"I'm just doing what good I can for its own sake. I'm not looking for redemption," Cassandra snapped. "I did what I did because I chose to, and now I'm doing this now because I choose to."

"Really? You feel as though you've had a choice in all your journeys?"

Clearly Serana was not going to take the hint. Cassandra stopped walking and turned to face the vampire. "If there's something you want to ask, ask it. Otherwise, can we please stop talking about this? I did some things that I'm not proud of, but they're in the past now, and I don't want to dwell on it. I try not to press you when it's clear you don't want to talk about something. I would appreciate it if you'd do the same. Also, I'd appreciate it if you stopped looking at me like I'm dinner." The Dragonborn started walking along the path again. "Now let's get this quest over with. Because I'm not dinner. I'm a person."

Serana stood there dumbstruck for a moment, then hurried to catch up. "I'm sorry, I was only trying to make conversation. You're – I – I just wanted to get to know you better. I didn't realize you didn't want to talk about it. I know you're a person, not just food. And you're a good person. That's why I want to know more about you. And I'm sorry about how I look at you. That's just how my eyes are."

"You don't look at Isran like that," Cassandra said. She suddenly felt terrible about her outburst. Serana's apologies made the entire thing seem entirely unjustified.

"That's because when I look at Isran, I really am thinking about dinner," replied Serana.

Cassandra wanted to ask, so what are you thinking about when you look at me? But the conversation needed to be over. "This valley is so empty," she remarked.

Serana had no reply to that, and so they walked along the bank of the frozen river in silence. Once or twice Cassandra thought she heard movement in the rocks to their right, but every time it was nothing but the wind. Not a single spider, cat, falmer, troll, or dragon attacked them on their way to the third shrine. The distraction from the lingering silence would have been welcome, but Cassandra wasn't complaining. The sun was a little past its zenith when they crossed a stone bridge across the mouth of the gorge and reached the top of the wayshrine poking out of the snow on the other side.

"You've arrived at the Wayshrine of Resolution. Are you prepared to honor the mantras of Auri-El and fill your vessel with His enlightenment?"

Cassandra sighed. "I'm not sure I want him filling my vessel."

"You've arrived at the Wayshrine of Resolution. Are you prepared to honor the mantras of Auri-El and fill your vessel with His enlightenment?" repeated the prelate.

"Yes," Serana answered.

"Then go forth, child. May the enrichment of Auri-El strengthen your resolve as you undertake your journey to the Inner Sanctum."

Cassandra dipped the ewer into the basin and did her best to ignore the repetitions of 'May Auri-El's glow shield you from your enemy.' "Where do we go now?" she asked, somewhat rhetorically, as she exited the dome of the shrine. She handed the ewer back to Serana, who they had decided was the better choice to hold onto it.

"Up the valley," Serana replied.

Cassandra was turning to follow the stony path away from the shrine when something down on the frozen lake above the waterfall caught her eye. "What's that?"

"It looks like a giant rock," said Serana dryly. She squinted against the glare of the sun reflecting on the ice. Wind had shaped the fallen snow into great drifts but left most of the surface uncovered. "I think there are steps cut into the base though."

"We should check it out before we head on. It could be important," Cassandra said. Before Serana could say anything, she added, "I know we need to be hurrying, but the snow elves wouldn't have put up a stone monolith in the middle of a lake for nothing." Cassandra took Serana's grumbling for some sort of affirmative answer and began to scramble down the rocks to get to the lake. Out on the ice, the freezing wind was horrific. Cassandra felt it cutting through every gap in her armor and working its way through her many layers of cloth and leather padding to chill her bones. She was almost halfway to the stone monolith when the first dragon burst up through the ice. As a gut instinct, Cassandra shouted before the beast could rise up very far -

"JOOR ZAH FRUL!"

The dragon roared and rose up a little farther before circling and landing. Against all odds, it didn't crush the ice it stood on. Not for the first time since the waterfall, Cassandra wished she had her bow. She drew the dragonbone sword she'd taken from the body of a Keeper and advanced on the grounded dragon while Serana circled from the other side, blasting it with ice spikes.

That was when she heard the crash behind her. Cassandra turned just in time to see a second dragon exploding up from the lake. She mentally swore. Shouting left her too winded to keep both dragons down at once, and fighting both at once was out of the question. She broke into a run toward the first dragon. She needed to keep it grounded. Two dragons in the air would be an unwinnable battle.

The briefest flash of heat on the back of her neck was her only warning-

"WULD!"

Cassandra was almost on top of the grounded dragon now. The ice where she'd been running was vaporized in a wash of flame. While the dragon still in the air circled for another pass, Cassandra assessed the situation. The first dragon was still on the ground, snapping with a toothless mouth at Serana – a swift lance of fear jabbed through her gut, but she had to assume that the vampire could take care of herself.

The two dragons they were fighting were different from any that Cassandra had seen before. These had orange scales flecked with blue and a row of horizontal spikes protruding from the sides of their neck, all the way down their backs. The spines gave the Dragonborn an idea.

Cassandra took a running start and leaped up, grabbing hold of one of the reddish spines by the dragon's neck with her left hand and using it to pull her feet up to run along the dragon's neck. She used her momentum to then spin and twist, landing on the dragon's back and barely avoiding falling down to the ice below. For a moment Cassandra's head swam from the spinning and her left shoulder felt like it had been dislocated from the strain of her weight and that of her armor. The dragon, reacting to its unwanted rider, reared up, shook its neck, and then took off into the air with a mighty jump.

Cassandra nearly slid off, but managed to cling to the dragon's spines. She was some distance down from its head, only a little forward of where its neck joined its body. There wasn't time, or a way, for her to get any higher. Gritting her teeth, the Dragonborn clenched her sword and began to hack into the scales covering the beast's spine. The first few blows merely scratched the dragon's hide and slid off, but soon they opened up a gash in its neck, and then the gash widened, and then bone was laid bare. Cassandra took as deep a breathe as she could to steady herself and then let go the dragon's spine so that she could hold her sword in both hands. Angling it downward, she plunged the blade down in between vertebrae with all her might.

The dragon screamed and twisted in midair, going into an out of control roll.

A hundred feet in the air, Cassandra let go. The ground came rushing towards her and for a moment she worried that she would truly die from the fall. "FEIM ZII GRON," she shouted, and her Thu'um reached out into the Void and changed her form, leaving it somewhere in between the corporeal and the Void itself. She landed on her feet.

The dragon was not so lucky. It plummeted from the sky, hitting the ice with a sickening crack and then bouncing several times before finally lying still a short distance from the massive stone near the edge of the lake.

The other dragon wheeled about in the sky. "Voslaarum! Zeymah Volsaarum! Krosis, Volsaarum! Zu fen kos him nahkriin!"

Cassandra looked up at the dragon, silhouetted against the darkening sky. "Meyz unt zu, nivahriin pook su'um!"

The dragon screamed in rage, tucked its wings close to its body, and dove down at the ethereal Dragonborn. It crashed through her incorporeal form and the ice beneath her feet, leaving a great watery hole behind. Splashing frantically, Cassandra grabbed ahold of the edge of the ice. She had just gotten a second hand up on top of the surrounding ice when her shout wore off and suddenly the full weight of her armor was pulling her down. Her gauntleted fingers scrambled at the slick ice, but couldn't find any purchase. "SERANA!"

The water was almost pitch black beneath the surface. And it was cold – very cold. Cassandra tried to find the straps on her gauntlets, the clasps, anything, but the water slowed her movement and the ebony fingers were too bulky and there was no light. She wasn't going to get the armor off in time. Did she know a waterbreathing spell? Yes! She did. How did it go, how did it go? What school was it from? Panic clouded her mind and instead of thinking of the spell, all she could think about was how she was going to drown. A sad death for the Dragonborn. All she'd worked for, all she'd overcome, and now she was going to die in a gods forsaken lake in the middle of nowhere.

There was a small puddle of light at the surface, the place where the dragon had broken the ice. It was getting smaller. And then it was gone. Instead, there were two golden orbs floating there – they looked like... eyes? An arm wrapped around Cassandra's waist and suddenly she wasn't sinking as fast anymore. Her helm came free and went tumbling down into the depths of the lake, and then one gauntlet and then the other, and then she wasn't sinking anymore, she was rising.

But they weren't rising fast enough. Cassandra's lungs burned – the only part of her that still felt warm. She tried to kick her feet, to add something to the swimming, but to no effect.

And then there was the dragon.

The shockwave from the roar from beneath their feet actually propelled them toward the surface, but it was followed by a jet of scalding water that blistered Cassandra's exposed skin. It seemed to go on forever, but then, as suddenly as it had come, it stopped.

When Cassandra's head breached the surface, she immediately began to cough up water. Serana pulled them both up onto the ice. The vampire's skin was even worse than the Dragonborn's. Serana's hands looked partially melted and the skin on her face was blistered badly. On the horizon, the sun had sunk below the mountains and was only barely still lighting the sky. The icy wind howled across the lake. "I told you this was a bad idea," Serana muttered. "Please don't die." The vampire hoisted the Dragonborn's limp form over her shoulders and set off as quickly as she could toward the wayshrine at the top of the hill at the edge of the lake.

As she walked, the defeated dragon lying on the surface of the lake began to shimmer with an unearthly pale pink-yellow glow. The light shimmered and twisted, intensifying, and then leapt forward, rushing toward the body of the Dragonborn. A twin stream joined it, rising up from beneath the ice. The two ribbons of power sank into Cassandra's body and then vanished. Where the dragon had been, now only a skeleton remained.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I've deviated a little from the way the quest plays out because yeah, whatever, artistic license and stuff.

This is chapter two of three.

Disclaimer: Standard fanfiction disclaimer. This fic also contains multiple quotes from the game.

Beautiful Skyrim Weather - Chapter Two

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Cassandra was stiff when she awoke. She was lying on the stone floor of the wayshrine, not particularly warm, but dry at least. What was left of her ebony armor was sitting in a neat pile beside her, along with the frozen ewer. She sat up slowly, feeling every muscle in her body, including all the ones she didn't know she had, ache. Her skin felt like she'd gotten the worst sunburn of her life and her neck in particular felt like she'd fallen asleep reading a book on a too small couch. It was nothing she hadn't pushed through before. After stretching and determining that everything was in working order, she buckled on her armor, took up the ewer, and stepped out into the morning light.

"May Auri-El's glow shield you from your enemy," greeted the ghostly prelate. Cassandra ignored him. "Serana? Where are you?"

"I'm right here." Serana was sitting with her back against the shrine and her arms crossed. Her hood was up and her face was hidden against the sun's rays. "Are you alright?"

"I am, thanks to you," Cassandra replied. "What happened? I don't remember much after I went under."

"I dived in after you. The dragon attacked again underwater, but I froze it," said Serana. She read Cassandra's face easily and added, "Don't look so surprised. I may have been sealed away, but I still remember how to fight. Hunger makes my affinity for frost stronger as well. I dragged you to the wayshrine because it was protected from the wind and I used fire magic as best I could to warm and dry you. I had to let your helmet and gauntlets sink. With your armor you were almost too heavy to swim up with and those were the easiest parts to drop."

"You froze the dragon solid?" Cassandra asked. "Why didn't you just do that as soon as the fight started? Why haven't you done that to everything we've fought so far?"

"I needed the lake to do it," Serana answered. "Do you think slaying a dragon is easy, Dovahkiin? I froze the water around it, not the dragon."

Cassandra ran a hand through her short brown hair. "I'm sorry. You saved my life. I should be thanking you, not questioning your methods."

"It's fine. Let's just get moving." Serana stood and turned to head down the path.

"Wait," said Cassandra. "I need to go back to the lake to get my sword. I left it in the first dragon. And I still want a look at that stone."

The Dragonborn had expected some kind of protest, even a 'You remember what happened last time?,' but Serana wordlessly followed her down to the lake. The wind seemed calmer than it had the day before, and for that Cassandra was grateful. Her helm was lost and there was nothing to protect her face from the elements now. There were no more dragons lucking this time, so the hardest part about reaching the great skeleton that still had her sword embedded between its vertebrae was keeping her footing on the slippery ice.

"You know," said Cassandra, "I read a book once that said Volkihar vampires lived in iced over lakes and could freeze people with their breath."

"Don't believe everything you read." Serana said tersely.

Cassandra picked her way through the dragon's remains and grasped her sword's hilt. The skeleton fell apart in a clatter of bone and scraps of scale.

When Serana didn't make a clever comment, Cassandra glanced over at her. "You're being unusually taciturn."

"I don't have an infinite store of witty remarks. Let's move faster. The sun is... it's not great for my skin, if you know what I mean."

Cassandra frowned. The vampire still had her hood up, her hands were hidden under crossed arms, and she'd even pulled her cloak down to cover the strip of cleavage her garment normally left exposed. "Not that the sun is hitting any of it," the Dragonborn remarked. "Do vampires tan?"

"Just look at your rock."

The stone was a Word Wall, but not like the others the Dragonborn had seen. It was a large standing stone instead of a semi-circular tablet, and there was no portrait of a dragon. It hadn't been built by the cultists. "Lungerd wahlaan qeth... Lunger raised this stone in her husband's memory, Thorgrima, keeper of crimson fire and lord of... magicka… Lah." The words were not entirely familiar, but she just knew. "Well, I think that was worth it," she said.

Serana said nothing. She continued to say nothing for the walk back across the lake and the slow walk along the crumbling cliff and the few skirmishes they had with falmer in the ravine. To call the travel slow would have been an understatement. The care that had to be given so as not to upset the makeshift falmer bridges was enormous, and fighting over the rickety platforms was difficult at best. In normal circumstances friendly banter would have relieved the stress of the journey, but… Cassandra was used to silence between them - when you walked across all Skyrim it happened - but this was off. Every now and then Cassandra would chance a look over at her companion, but Serana kept her face under the hood of her cloak.

Finally, when they'd stopped for the night in a falmer hut that they'd cleared of its previous occupants, Cassandra tried to start a conversation again while she unpacked a few strips of salted horker meat. She'd attempted to eat the… whatever it was that the former residents of the hut had kept as food (skeever? chaurus? dung?), but decided that preserving her dwindling supply of horker wasn't worth more than preserving her intestines. "So, Thorgrima... sounds like a woman's name, right?"

"No."

"But that 'a' on the end is a feminine sound. Like your name. Serana. That's a woman's name. Like mine. Clearly." Cassandra cursed at herself. Her conversation attempt was terrible.

"You're not a Nord," Serana said.

"No, I'm not," said Cassandra. "I am an Imperial. From Cyrodiil. You know there's an empire there now?"

"Really."

"Well, it's not much of an empire anymore. But with Jarl Elisif as High Queen, Skyrim is still part of it. Thank Talos. Ulfric would have gotten the place conquered by the Thalmor."

"Hm."

"Is something wrong Serana?"

"No."

"By the Nine! You've hardly said a word all day and you've still got your hood up even though the sun set an hour ago!" On an impulse, Cassandra reached over and flipped Serana's hood back.

"My face, I-

Cassandra let out a disbelieving laugh. "Your face is fine, it's, it's perfect. I wish my skin healed that fast, I still feel like a boiled fish. I don't understand."

"I don't want to talk about this," Serana snapped, pulling her hood back up. She got up from the small fire they'd lit and walked out of the hut. "Just leave me alone for a while."

Cassandra wasn't stupid, at least, not always. She let the vampire leave. Serana wasn't bothered by the cold and wind, only by the remote possibility that she'd be snowed under since she had no body heat of her own. But what was bothering her so badly? Was it the hunger? Cassandra had lost her helm, maybe that was making things worse? Unconsciously, she raised a hand to massage her neck.

Huh. That was odd. Her neck hurt.

Gingerly, Cassandra prodded at her neck. She felt a wound that had scabbed over. The Dragonborn frowned. She didn't remember being hit there during the battle with the dragons, and although she'd lost her helm she'd been lucky enough not to be struck by any falmer. On the precarious walkways she'd paid extra attention to avoiding blows, fearing that just one misfortunate strike could knock her down into the abyss. Cassandra frowned. She needed to see her neck.

Cassandra lifted the ewer. It was just shiny enough to give her a dull and indistinct reflection. She held it up a little above her face and squinted at the image. There was a pair of ragged scabs near the base of her neck, relatively fresh wounds.

Oh.

Cassandra set the ewer down and stood up. She stepped out of the hut. "Serana?" No response. "Serana?" she tried again. Still nothing. If Serana wasn't responding at all then she had probably gone some distance away, or she was pretending she'd gone some distance away. The hut was at least a hundred feet above the ground and, Dragonborn though she was, Cassandra couldn't see very well in the dark. "If you can hear me, I'd like to talk."

The wind howled through the otherwise quiet canyon.

"Serana, I know you fed on me," Cassandra said to the empty darkness. "I'm not angry. You did what you needed to. I understand that. I've been there. I understand too if you have other reasons to be upset. But you mean a lot to me and I don't want you to be upset on my behalf."

Cassandra stood at the entrance to the hut for several minutes, waiting for something, but it never happened. Finally she went back inside. The wind howled outside and slipped through the cracks in the carapace hut. She lay down for an uneasy rest, doing her best to ignore the chill.

[] [] []

The next morning, Cassandra was still alone. She stepped out of the hut when the sun was just beginning to brighten the horizon and saw no one. A tendril of worry wrapped around her gut. She had expected Serana to come back at some point in the night. Should she wait for the vampire? No. There were only two directions to go in the valley, forward and back. If she went forward now, Serana would find her eventually and she couldn't afford to waste any time just waiting. Still though, the worry twisted in the pit of her stomach. Cassandra took up the ewer and tied it by its handle to her belt with a strip of leather. She needed both her hands to fight – she would just have to trust that the water would remain frozen.

Threading her way along the falmer rope and log bridges, Cassandra was unnerved by the emptiness of the gorge. Where were the falmer? Where were the charus? Occasionally she would pass a splatter of blood on the ice or an arrow embedded in the wooden walkway, but nowhere were the enemies that should have been swarming the village.

The Dragonborn could only conclude that Serana had pushed ahead the previous night. The worry grew. Night was the vampire's natural element, but in a battle anything could happen. Every time Cassandra rounded a bend, she half expected to find Serana's lifeless body. Or maybe she would never find a body. Perhaps around the next bend there would be falmer and no sign of Serana.

How could the woman have been so reckless? Had she really been so upset that she'd abandon all caution and sense?

Cassandra was so lost in thought and used to the emptiness of the canyon that when the falmer arrow thudded into the breastplate of her ebony armor she almost lost her balance and fell over the edge of the walkway. She barely managed to drop to one knee instead of tumbling backwards. It took less than a second to locate the falmer archer at the other end of the bridge. It was unarmored, an easy kill if she could just close the distance.

Cassandra drew her sword. "WULD NAH KEST!" The Dragonborn sprinted forward. Although the walkway swayed beneath her feet she was moving so fast it hardly mattered. She only ended the charge when her sword was buried to the hilt in the falmer's chest, straight through the twisted thing's sternum. Blood splattered all across her armor and face.

For a moment she stood above her kill. Had Serana missed one?

By instinct, Cassandra dropped to the ground when she heard the whistle of an arrow. The missile passed harmlessly over her, right through the space her head had been a moment ago. Another falmer, this one larger than the last and armored to boot, advanced from inside a nearby hut. It dropped its bow and drew a weapon that looked more like a club than a sword. Still on the ground, Cassandra scrambled backwards until her foot reached the edge of the platform and slipped off to hang above the deadly drop. The falmer was almost on her.

"FUS!"

The force of the Dragonborn's Thu'um staggered her enemy and bought her a few precious moments to stand. She caught the falmer's first strike on the hilt of her sword. The impact was greater than she'd expected and her arm and shoulder ached from the strain of holding the falmer back. Keeping her enemy's weapon locked against her own, Cassandra circled around until the monster's back was to the edge of the platform.

"FUS ROH DAH!"

The falmer let out a strangled scream and went flying back. It continued to scream all the way down to the icy river below. The canyon walls resounded with the shout; pebbles and stones shaken loose joined the falmer's descent.

Serana wouldn't have missed two falmer. She wasn't careless. Something must have happened. Cassandra cast her eyes around the platform, looking for some sign of what had transpired. The first falmer she'd killed was lying in a growing puddle of blood by the walkway. The wind had blown away any snow that might have kept footprints. She saw nothing of use.

Cassandra sheathed her sword. She was not a great mage, despite having been made Arch-Mage of the College of Winterhold. Like so many of her titles, it had been bestowed for her mercenary services, not for any great talent or accomplishment. When she absolutely needed a spell, she would find an enchanted staff, or bring along a companion who was a better hand at magic. However, though she was not a great mage, she was passable at a few small things. Clairvoyance was one of the first spells Cassandra had learned. Before coming to Skyrim she had never dabbled in magic. On a whim she had picked up a spellbook from the table in Farengar Secret-Fire's study in Dragonsreach while only half listening to the wizard describe the tomb he wanted an artifact from. The words on the pages seemed to have flowed from the book into her mind. Those were the words she thought of then on the swaying falmer platform in that forsaken vale.

The Dragonborn raised her hands and to her vision the world was bathed in a pale blue light. Not too far away a patch of ground glowed especially bright. Cassandra lowered her hands and walked toward the area the spell had illuminated. There on the ground was a stain of dark crimson. Not far from that was another, and then another, and they formed a trail down a rocky ledge that protruded from the edge of the cliff.

The worry in her stomach became dread and urgency. She took the bow and arrows from the enemy she'd slain and set off.

There were several falmer along the path but dispatching them was no challenge at all. They weren't even enough to distract Cassandra from the fear gnawing at her heart. What was worse than that fear though was the voice in the back of her head. 'If Serana is dead, her father will never have her blood.' It was a traitor voice. 'And if I die, we had the scrolls with us, and the scrolls were the map to get here…' Worse than the voice were the images – memories of exploring a Dwemer ruin and finding pieces of people or, even worse, finding mangled bodies left mostly whole, tied down with faces contorted in agony.

Eventually Cassandra came to a dark gap in the cliff wall and she entered without a second thought. She'd used her last torch on that first night in the valley. Using her meager magic, she summoned a flicker of fire to hover by her shoulder. It was just enough to illuminate the ground before her and to create a tableau of ominous shivering shadows just beyond its small halo of light. She advanced a foot or two at a time, always having to wait to see where the path was, always wary of a sudden cliff edge or trap. By using the wisp, she left herself unable to cast anything else, and she tired quickly, but without a torch or a guide she didn't have a choice.

Once upon a time Cassandra had been able to see in the darkness. Not too long after she had joined the Companions of the Jorrvaskr in Whiterun they had initiated her into the Circle, a group of werewolves within the Companions. She felt like she had been young then. All she had seen was power and she'd taken Aela's blood of her own volition. Young and stupid. For a time lycanthropy had had its benefits. She had roamed Skyrim, hunting and fighting in the form of a beast, a ruler of the night in her own right beneath the moon.

It hadn't been a curse then, it had been power. It had been fun.

But then the dreams began. Every night she was haunted by visions of daedric realms, and in every realm she was hunted. She never knew what chased her, only that it was at her heels and always gaining. It chased her through the labyrinths of Attribution's Share, stalked her in the shadows of Apocrypha, hunted her in Coldharbour. And then during the day there was the restlessness – not a desire for food or for anything tangible, but it drove her on, to keep moving, to keep fighting, to keep finding obstacles to overcome. With every new daedric artifact she hung on her wall, the dreams became worse, but she couldn't stop herself from claiming them. They were a challenge before her, and every challenge had to be defeated.

In retrospect, the lifestyle of the Companions made sense.

And then Kodlak Whiteman, Harbringer of the Companions, had died. His last wish had been to be freed, cured, released, from the werewolf curse. There was a cure. Cassandra went with the other members of the Circle to Ysgramor's Tomb to release Kodlak's spirit from Hircine's hunting grounds, and when she released him she released herself as well. The dreams still came to her sometimes, but not every night, and more and more infrequently as time passed.

That small erasure of daedric influence had meant a lot to Cassandra, but creeping through the cave, she suddenly longed for that power once again. How convenient it would have been to shed her clothes and grow into her beast, to go bounding through the cave ripping apart anything that got in her way, to follow the trail of blood even in the pitch darkness by scent alone. It would be easy. She could find Serana quickly, save the vampire quickly. Before anything worse happened.

But she'd given up that power to regain some small piece of her soul. The only daedric artifact she didn't keep locked in a chest in her basement in Riften was Azura's Star. Even the Dawnbreaker felt too much like someone else's power and control. But if the delay made a difference to Serana, if the speed would change things?

Cassandra moved along the path as quickly as she dared. She couldn't waste time, but she also couldn't afford to lose her footing. There was some sort of drop on one side of the track and she had no intention of finding out what was at the bottom. Judging from the way the path sloped downward though, she was going to find out anyway. Eventually the incline evened out and she felt confident enough to speed up to a slow jog through the long tunnel. Alongside of her, the wisp of light kept pace, warding off the inky black.

There was a distant crash, and then another.

Throwing caution to the wind, Cassandra broke out into a sprint.

At last the tunnel widened into a cavern and in the center of the cavern was the cause of the noise. A group of falmer were mobbing a strange humanoid thing with an extra set of appendages. Cassandra slowed to a stop and drew her sword but didn't charge in because she was unsure of what she was witnessing. The weird creature beneath the falmer was familiar to her, though she'd never seen it before.

A falmer went soaring through the air, thrown by the beast beneath it. The fallen elf hit a wall of the cave and crumpled.

The humanoid thing grunted. "Cassandra! What are you waiting for?" yelled Serana's voice.

Cassandra charged forward. Ah, right, that was why the thing looked familiar. It looked like Harkon when he had decided to exhibit his superiority. Serana had never transformed in front of the Dragonborn – had made a point of it, now that she thought about it – and so Cassandra had never seen her in her… other shape.

She was almost upon the pile of falmer and vampire now, and with only a few feet left to go, Cassandra unleased a shout, sending several of the cave dwelling creatures flying. With their numbers reduced, she set upon them, hacking and slashing and praying she didn't hit Serana as well. It was too dark to see properly. She couldn't block blows with her gauntlet like she normally would; if she tried, she'd lose a hand. Thank the Nine the falmer were short, hunched, and blind. Their blows were crude hacking motions that didn't reach high enough to threaten the Dragonborn's vulnerable head. If they connected with her torso and legs, they staggered her, but her armor protected her from any serious injury. She just had to keep swinging her sword and ignoring the blisters forming on her ungloved hands.

In her peripheral vision, she thought she saw a giant shadow reminiscent of a bat rip a falmer in half.

When the dust settled, Cassandra was the only thing in the cavern still standing as far as she could see. "Serana?"

Something moved in the dark and there was a sick cracking noise. The Dragonborn tightened her grip on her sword and waited, ready to kill anything that appeared.

Eventually a very battered, human-looking, Serana stepped slowly into the field of Cassandra's small light. After most battles Serana was one of those people who was still unfairly attractive no matter how much blood had been spilled – but from what Cassandra could tell, the woman currently looked like shit. "You certainly took your time about it," the vampire said, though not without gratitude in her tone.

Cassandra sheathed her sword and felt her shoulders sag as tension washed out of them. "I didn't recognize you at first. I'm not sure why though, I've seen your father and the family resemblance is striking."

"Hahah, very funny," replied Serana. She paused. Cassandra couldn't see the other woman's face, but she suspected the vampire was expressing something other than generic relief and gratefulness. "But in all seriousness, thank you. I couldn't fight that many falmer at once by myself. I believe we're now even."

"Listen," Cassandra said, "Can we talk about yesterday?"

"I'd rather not right now."

"Fine, not right now. It's not the sort of talk I want to have while standing in the pitch dark and in the middle of a heap of dead falmer. But when we get out of this cave."

"I'd rather not." Serana started to walk away. "I can feel a breeze from this direction, I think the exit is this way."

Cassandra quickly reached out and grabbed Serana's arm. She lost her grip the first time from all the gore covering both of them, but she tried again, this time catching the vampire's wrist. "Serana, we're not even. You saved me from drowning, I saved you from falmer. But I also found you, woke you up from that crypt. You still owe me. When we get out of here, we're going to talk."

"And then I won't owe you anymore?" Serana asked.

"Fine, as long as we talk," Cassandra said. She felt a little conflicted about relinquishing the debt, but if it would make Serana sit down and listen to her, it would be worth it. "Now where did you say the exit was? This place stinks like rotting chaurus dung."

The exit was thankfully close, and fresh air had never smelled so sweet. The cave let them out near the river at the bottom of the gorge. The sun was still in the sky, but it had sunk low enough that its rays no longer reached the banks of the river where they stood. Cassandra looked at the river. If they went upstream, they'd be going in the direction they needed. Hopefully they hadn't missed a wayshrine when they detoured through the cave. The water looked tempting for a bath, anything to wash off the dead falmer, but it was Skyrim water, no doubt straight from a glacier. Cassandra missed dearly the rivers of Cyrodiil.

"We're here," said Serana. "So talk."

Cassandra turned away from the river to face Serana. The vampire had healed most of the damage the falmer had inflicted, but the dried blood on her skin and splattered all across her badly torn armor was a testament to how many lacerations she'd had to recover from. A few of the deeper wounds still bled sluggishly. Cassandra took a deep breath. What was it she'd said last night? Ah, that was it. "Serana, I know you fed on me," Cassandra said. It was so much harder to speak to Serana instead of to the darkness where Serana may or may not be hiding. "I'm not angry. You did what you needed to. I understand that. I've been there. I understand too if you have other reasons to be upset. But you mean a lot to me and I don't want you to be upset on my behalf."

"Is that all you have to say?" Serana asked. "Because that's exactly what you said last night."

"You heard me?"

Serana shrugged.

"Why did you go charging off on your own?"

"We weren't moving fast enough," Serana answered. "I wanted to clear the way so we could move faster."

What bullshit, Cassandra thought. She didn't say anything though, she just raised an eyebrow.

Serana's lips tightened into a frown. "I'm not upset on your behalf, I'm upset on my behalf," she said. "Don't misunderstand me, I am perfectly content with what I am. I may not be my father, but I am not an innocent nor do I long to be one. I am a vampire, and humans are what I eat – they're food…" She paused, but not long enough for Cassandra to interrupt. "You're not food. I didn't want you to be food to me, and that is why I was upset. As for leaving, I thought that killing falmer would be a good way to blow off steam. One of them dropped down behind me and knocked me out, and that's how I ended up in the cave. I woke up shortly before you arrived, but as soon as I started moving they mobbed me."

Cassandra should have been expecting something like that response. She had, half ways at least. But still, she didn't have a response ready. Instead, she said, "I see."

"You're… a better friend… than I've had in a very, very long time. Perhaps a better friend than I've ever had."

"I, uh, thank you," said Cassandra. She kicked at one of the larger pebbles on the bank of the river. "We should be able to follow the river to get to the end of the gorge. Let's go that way."

Serana nodded. "It's getting dark, follow me."

"Of course," said Cassandra. "Friend."


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: Sorry this took so long to upload. It's been done and just needing final editing since July. But then I rewrote a lot of the final part because concussions are hard to explain and school happened.

This last chapter is being posted now because of two things. I got this review from Child of Sithis and I was like, oh hey, there was that fic, I should post the last chapter that's basically done (also, thank you Alienking686 for your reviews, and HeavyMetalRose for calling out my plot hole). Let this be a lesson that when authors claim reviews motivate them so insert begging here, you should listen to them. The second thing was that I have to finish reading a selection of Foucault once I post this and pretty much every kind of procrastination ever is better than Foucault.

This is the third and final chapter.

Disclaimer: This chapter, especially toward the end, quotes extensively from the game.

Beautiful Skyrim Weather - Chapter Three

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By the time they reached the glacier, 'weary' was a massive understatement for Cassandra's condition. She'd been going almost nonstop since dawn and her nerves were badly frayed from having to walk forward in almost pitch darkness, depending only on Serana to keep her from falling and to fight off any falmer or chaurus that attacked. It had been over three days since they entered the vale. Cassandra was exhausted.

Serana, however, showed no signs of so much as slowing down.

It wasn't until Cassandra tripped and fell that the vampire stopped. For a while the Dragonborn just lay there on the ice, not moving. It seemed like a good place to take a nap. Just a quick nap – she'd be up in a few minutes, but she needed to close her eyes. She was just starting to drift off when Serana shaking her shoulder jolted her back into reality.

"I'm tired and hungry too," the vampire said. "But we have to keep going." She tried to pull Cassandra to her feet, but the Dragonborn was having none of it.

"No. We have to rest. I have to rest," Cassandra said from her place on the ground. She rolled over and scooted toward the icy wall of the glacier to have something to put her back against. "Somewhere at the end of this road is the arch-curate. And we'll have to fight him. That's the way these adventures always work. Exhausting ourselves here and now is just a way to get killed. Good night."

"You're going to freeze to death," Serana protested, but it fell on deaf ears.

Cassandra woke with her head in Serana's lap as matinal light touched the top of the glacial crevice. The other woman was sitting cross legged and slumped up against the ice wall. She'd draped her suncloak over her companion's prone form. It wasn't much against the cold, but Cassandra appreciated the gesture. In the quiet moments of waking, the urgency that had filled her being for the past several days was far from her mind. At some point Serana had gone from keeping vigil to sleeping peacefully. Careful not to wake her companion, Cassandra shifted so that she could see the vampire's face.

To see peace in Skyrim was rare. Blood had soaked deep into the permafrost in times forgotten and the land was cursed with perpetual violence. The crimson stains across Serana's skin, and the stench of day-old unwashed gore, and the thick scabs over deep wounds were so familiar to Cassandra that she didn't even perceive them. All she saw was Serana, relaxed, her face a slumbering mask of calm. The light hit it just so, and Cassandra imagined that the corners of the other woman's mouth were turned ever so slightly up towards a smile.

Cassandra savored the moment, knowing that however long it lasted wouldn't be long enough. Serana's eyelids fluttered and the spell was broken; her mouth immediately set into a frown and she shifted to signal Cassandra to get up so that she could get up too.

Every muscle in Cassandra's body protested any sort of movement. She was bruised, battered, and, worst of all, cold. When she handed Serana's cloak back, the vampire shook out a shower of ice crystals from the fabric. The two of them resumed their slow march through the chasm.

The path wound back and forth and up and down and not for the first time Cassandra was glad she wasn't afraid of heights. Rested, though nowhere near as much as she'd have liked, the Dragonborn was able to dispatch the falmer along the way relatively easily. By looting the bodies that didn't fall into the river below, she was able to acquire a pair of chitin gauntlets, to cram her head into a foul smelling helmet, and to wield an only slightly crooked bow that shot almost straight arrows in the general direction of her intended target. The bow, when it worked, was a blessing because even if the arrow wasn't fatal, the kick from the impact sent her targets tumbling to their deaths.

Serana, to Cassandra's slight annoyance, looked more alive after every scuffle. Just like the Dragonborn had a system for shouting and bashing and shooting falmer over the edge of a cliff, the vampire had a system. Serana's system involved shooting an ice spike through her victim, pinning them to the ground, and then casting a life draining spell, leaving nothing but shriveled husks in her wake.

"If you can just drain the life out of things, why do you need to feed?" Cassandra asked.

"Food and energy are related but different. If you're wounded, it wouldn't matter how many stamina potions you drank. It's the same for this."

Cassandra kicked a fallen falmer to make sure it was dead. When she was satisfied, she asked, "How long have you been a vampire?"

"It's not polite to ask a lady her age," Serana replied. "But truly, I'm not sure. When I returned to the castle, I tried to find out how much time had passed. I don't remember this empire of yours existing when my mother hid me, and they say that the empire was created in a 'First Era.' But none of us ever paid much attention to age, so beyond that I can't say."

"So, a long time."

"But I've spent most of my life asleep. I don't feel old."

Cassandra laughed. "I'm twenty-eight and some days I feel old enough to retire and die in my sleep. I think I saw a wrinkle in the mirror the other week."

"You're already older than I was when…"

When Serana trailed off, Cassandra gripped her sword tighter and looked around. "What's wrong? Do you see something?" All she saw were the icy walls of the glacier. Nothing moved and without their conversation the place was deathly silent.

"Ah, no, it's nothing," replied Serana. "I was just thinking about my family."

Cassandra stayed silent for as long as she could without abandoning the conversation before saying softly, "I'm sorry… I… Do you think… Do you think we'll have to kill him?"

"That's where this is going, isn't it?" Serana asked in reply. "I just wish he wasn't so stubborn, obsessed; I wish both of them weren't so stubborn and obsessed." Serana let out a hollow laugh. "My father is trying to bring about a vampire apocalypse, my mother has locked herself in the Soul Cairn to avoid him, and I've been sleeping in a cave for at least fifteen hundred years. This is all so… so stupid!" Her shoulders slumped. "But enough about me, about my family. This entire journey has been about our little problems. What about your family? You're a good person, I'm sure your parents must be good people too. Better than mine, at least. I'd like to meet them, some day."

Mechanically, Cassandra said, "They're dead."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know, I-

"It's fine," Cassandra said. "They've been dead a while. We lived in Cyrodiil. Our family kept following Talos after the White-Gold Concordat. The Thalmor got them executed."

"They died for their beliefs. That's admirable."

"Is it? Do you really think that? They stood up for their beliefs and I ended up an orphan."

"Of course I- … No." Serana paused. "Who is Talos?"

Cassandra nearly tripped. She gaped for a second, then, "Who is Talos? By the Nine… You're… you're older than Talos."

Serana said nothing, still waiting for an answer.

"Talos is a god," said Cassandra. "He was the first emperor! He united Tamriel, he founded the Septim dynasty, and when he died, he became a god. He's the hero of mankind. He's one of the Divine. He was a Dragonborn too, blessed by Akatosh, and all his descendants too."

"So that's why you're always talking about the Nine," Serana mused. "I only remember there being eight. Does it not bother you that you now know someone older than a god?"

Cassandra opened her mouth to insist on Talos' divinity, but then closed it. For a while they traveled through the glacier in silence while Cassandra mulled over her thoughts. Finally, she said, "I came to Skyrim to worship Talos. He was a Nord, you know. But then I got here and so many things happened and everything changed. I ended up fighting for the Empire. My parents must have rolled over in their graves. I just came to realize that the Thalmor are the greatest enemy and the Stormcloaks, even with Ulfric, couldn't fight them as well as the Empire. And if the Empire defeat the Thalmor, then they'll restore Talos to his proper place. My parents died because they believed that Talos is a god. He has worshippers, temples, his shrines heal the sick, I feel his power when I hold his amulet. I've always known that he was once a man. Why should it disturb my belief to have this reaffirmed? That is not the nature of belief."

"I wonder how I'll feel if I'm alive in another fifteen hundred years and they're calling you a god."

With a laugh, Cassandra replied, "While I suspect you'll still be around, I'm no Talos."

It took them the better part of the day to reach the final wayshrine. The ghostly prelate greeted them as they arrived at the buried outpost. "

"You've arrived at the Wayshrine of Radiance. Are you prepared to honor the mantras of Auri-El and fill your vessel with His enlightenment?"

"Yes," said Cassandra in a voice filled with relief. The prelate raised the shine from beneath the earth. "May the blessings of Auri-El protect you as you climb the road to the Inner Sanctum and final enlightenment."

"Final enlightenment sounds a little ominous," Serana remarked as they walked across the white marble bridge of the Inner Sanctum.

"Maybe that's what happened to the Arch-Curate," replied Cassandra. She was tired and wounded, but in a good mood nevertheless. The sun had warmed the stones they crossed and the high walls and short length of the canyon kept out the terrible winds – for once she was something approaching not cold.

The bridge lead them beneath an enormous arch, then up a flight of stairs, beneath another arch, and into a desolate courtyard. Scraggly weeds were all that remained of what was once probably a flourishing garden. In the center of the yard was a massive golden statue of Auri-El. He wore a robe over heavy armor and a crowd atop his head. In his hands he held the sun. Behind him rose the façade of the sanctum, pockmarked with craters where giant chunks of masonry had fallen free. Ice hung from the eves and nearly every window was broken.

"This place must have been marvelous when the Snow Elves were still here," Cassandra said. "It's sad that it's come to this."

"This is how every temple ends up eventually," said Serana.

They ascended the steps up to the entrance of the sanctum. A short ways from the locked door was a basin to receive the waters of the wayshrines. Cassandra hefted the ewer and glanced at it apprehensively. The water was still frozen. She set the vessel down on the edge of the basin and turned to Serana. "Are you any good with fire magic? We need to melt this."

"No, but I'll see what I can do." Serana stepped forward and lifted the ewer, then frowned. "This is already melted."

"What?"

Serana tipped over the ewer and poured out a stream of water into the basin. "See? I suppose it wasn't a glorified bucket after all."

Both women stood and stared at the basin. Nothing was happening. "What now?" Cassandra asked.

"Perhaps we should try the door. Maybe it's unlocked," said Serana.

Cassandra had taken only a few steps toward the door when she heard the stone shifting under her feet. Just in time she jumped out of the way of a shallow channel forming where she had been standing. Through it, water flowed from the basin until it reached a shallow indentation near the base of the doors to the sanctum. When the basin had been filled a great sun-emblem on the doors turn to the side and pulled itself apart. "Well, I think they're unlocked now," said Cassandra. She stepped forward and gave the doors a gentle push. They swung open noiselessly and, to her pleasant surprise, there were no enemies beyond, lying in wait to pounce. The room held nothing but statues.

The still interior of the temple was dark and the Dragonborn had to stand by the entrance while her eyes adjusted. Less hindered by the lighting, Serana began poking around the atrium. "All the falmer are… frozen in ice. And I thought the Soul Cairn was creepy."

"Falmer?" Cassandra asked. She squinted and scanned the room, but the only thing moving was Serana. "What falmer?"

"These falmer." Serana gestured and then Cassandra knew the statues for what they really were.

"My gods…" she whispered. "Are those actually…?"

"I don't know how they would have gotten here if they weren't."

Cassandra hefted her sword and approached the nearest falmer. For a moment she just stood there, waiting for it to do something unexpected. When it didn't, she shrugged, braced herself, and swung the hilt of her sword at the thing's temple. The falmer's head shattered into a hundred frozen fragments. "I don't want them waking up behind us."

"Agreed."

Together, the two women walked the area of the room, smashing every falmer and chaurus. "I wish I'd brought a mace," Cassandra complained. "Swords just weren't made for this."

"Do you even own a mace?" Serana asked. She swung her dagger and an entire chaurus burst. "I've never seen you use one."

"Yes, I have a mace, but I keep it locked up in my basement because…" Cassandra glanced over at her companion. "It's enchanted and it makes me queasy holding it. It has some sort of weird soul trap enchantment."

"That's interesting. Perhaps I could see it when we're done with all this?"

"I'd rather you not. It's in the chest with… the rest of my daedric artifacts. I don't like opening it. You understand, right?"

"Oh." Serana's tone said she understood everything perfectly well. "You know, I'm not as fragile as these falmer." She kicked a broken-off ear for emphasis. "You can tell me things. I won't break."

"I know you won't break," said Cassandra. "I just don't want to change the way you feel about me. The daedric artifacts… I was young and stupid. I thought I needed the power. The… the mace in particular – it was all so easy. I didn't even feel guilty afterwards. And now I'm older and less stupid and I don't even know which daedric realm I'll end up in when I die and that's a terrifying thought."

"Cassandra, I'm not in a position to judge anyone for giving themselves to a daedric lord. I understand."

"I… Thank you."

With a renewed vigor, the Dragonborn set upon the frozen falmer. When the two friends were done, the floor was littered with sharp, glassy shards that crunched underfoot. Some of them were from… inside the creatures and Cassandra tried not to look too long at them.

"I wonder what did that to them," Serana wondered out loud.

"I think we're going to find out," Cassandra replied. "Is that what the dragon looked like when you were done with him?"

"Yes, but the dragon was prettier. Come on, I see a door back there."

The vampire and the Dragonborn advanced through the halls of the temple, laying waste to the frozen legions until the halls ran out. "Dead end," said Cassandra. "Where do we go now?"

"There was a crevice in the ice a ways back. Maybe we could try that," said Serana.

The opening in the ice lead them to a short drop and another corridor. That corridor lead to a grand, vaulted room, filled with frozen falmer and icy stalagmites rising up from the floor, and there, at the far end of the room, was a snow elf with skin as white as the marble of his throne.

"Arch-Curate Vyrthur, I presume," Cassandra said. She eyed the falmer warily. The entire room felt like a deathtrap. The falmer could wake up, the stalactites could drop from the ceiling, any sufficiently large spell from Vyrthur would be impossible to avoid…

The snow elf stirred. "Did you really come here expecting to claim Auriel's Bow?" he asked. His lips contorted into a sneer of contempt. "You've done exactly as I predicted and brought your fetching companion to me. Which, I'm sorry to say, means your usefulness is at an end." He flicked his fingers and all around the room ice statues burst into life.

Cassandra swore and raised her sword just in time to block a chaurus' leap. The force of the collision knocked her back several feet. Cassandra grit her teeth. She was the Dragonborn, slayer of Alduin, a few chaurus didn't stand a chance. She took a deep breath and then shouted out, "YOL TOOR SHUL!" A cone of searing flames shot out of her mouth, incinerating every bit of ice that it touched. Three chaurus were caught in the blast and when the fires subsided they were nothing but puddles on the floor. At Cassandra's side, Serana finished off her last opponent by sinking a dagger deep into its skull, shattering its head.

On his throne, Vyrthur looked positively bored. "An impressive display, but a wasted effort. You delay nothing but your own deaths."

"You're not the first to say that," Cassandra challenged.

"But I am the last," Vyrthur replied.

The entire room began to shake. Dust rained down from above and cracks shot through some of the larger stalagmites.

"He's bringing the ceiling down!" Serana shouted.

Cassandra barely parried a swing from one of the now-animate falmer. "We have bigger problems right now." With a grunt, she shoved the falmer's blade off to the side, leaving the creature open. "YOL!" The noise the melting falmer made was like nails on slate, rising in pitch until it finally subsided into a gurgle.

"I don't know," Serana shouted back. Even yelling though, her voice barely carried over the din of falling debris and fighting. "Falmer haven't killed us yet, a ceiling still might!"

Somewhere in the back of Cassandra's mind she wondered how Serana had breath to shout and fight at the same time. She really didn't have time to be distracted. Lunge. Dodge. Parry. Roll. Slash. Roll. Even fighting against several enemies at once, battle had a certain rhythm to it. Cassandra simply reacted as fast as she could and slowly but surely the falmer were cut down. The ceiling was falling, but she ignored it; she couldn't fight and watch out above at the same time. The strategy worked, until a falmer slipped past her guard and forced her to stumble back to avoid decapitation. Cassandra's heel hit a bit of debris and she tripped backward, ending up sprawled on her back. When she fell, the back of her head banged into the stone floor and the world swam in a painful ocean of light. In the brief moment she was incapacitated, the falmer that had come so near to killing her jumped up and landed on her chest. Cassandra saw the sword descending on her as if in slow motion and instinct took over.

"FUS ROH DAH!"

The frozen falmer shattered in an explosion of ice, but the reverberations of the shout kept traveling until they collided with the roof. The entire building groaned and then the ceiling began to really fall. Chunks of rock larger than a full grown man came free and plummeted, smashing flagstones and blasting craters into the floor. Small bits of rubble poured down and dust rose up, stirred by the impacts. Cassandra couldn't see, couldn't breathe. She struggled to up to her knees and then curled into a ball, keeping her head down and dropping her sword so she could cover the back of her neck with her hands. Tiny rocks cut her exposed fingers. Serana had been right, she thought grimly, except about the part where _Vyrthur_ bringing down the ceiling would be the death of them.

Something heavy hit her back, and she hoped it was a rock and not a falmer weapon. Something else hit her, and then again, and again, and it couldn't be falmer because a falmer would have gone for the kill already, and again and then it hit the back of her head and the world went dark.

"Are you alright?"

Alright? Cassandra felt like a mammoth had stepped on her head and then its attendant giant sat on her. She opened her eyes, only to shut them immediately when she realized her face was covered in a thick layer of dust. "Yes," she answered as she tried to wipe her face clean. When she finished and opened her eyes, Serana was standing over her with her hand outstretched.

"Come on, we can do this. I know we can."

Cassandra took the offered hand and stood. A lancing pain shot through her foot, but she bit her lip and ignored it. "What are we doing?" She and Serana were standing in a great pile of rubble. Some of the pieces looked to have been parts of a ceiling. An evening sun bathed the whole scene in a crimson light. "What are we doing?"

"He's over there." Serana gestured to a balcony that had originally been behind the throne. A snow elf was lying on the ground by the railing – the collapse of the ceiling hadn't been as kind to him as it had to the two women. His hands were bathed in a golden light though; he would soon be recovered.

"What are we doing?" Cassandra demanded again. "Is he an enemy?"

Serana bit her lip and glanced over at the healing snow elf. The longer she stood there with the dazed Cassandra, the farther out of their grasp victory would slip. But if Cassandra was badly injured… It wouldn't matter if Vyrthur killed them both. "We have to kill him, Vyrthur." Serana grabbed the Dragonborn's hand and tugged her in Vyrthur's direction. "We have to hurry. I'll explain after."

Cassandra shook her head. "I don't like killing… but if you say we need to." She frowned and picked a falmer club up from the ground. "I don't like killing…" Unsteady on her feet, Cassandra followed her companion over to where the man was pulling himself up with the assistance of the balcony rail. His right leg looked misshapen, his white skin was covered in dark bruises, and he had a deep gash across his forehead. Still though, he stood and crouched in a fighter's stance.

"Enough Vyrthur. Give us the bow!" Serana demanded.

Vyrthur snarled. "How dare you. I was the Arch-Curate of Auri-El, girl. I had the ears of a god!"

"Until the 'Betrayed' corrupted you. Yes, yes. We've heard this sad story," said Serana.

The snow elf laughed. "Gelebor and his kind are easily manipulated fools. Look into my eyes, Serana. You tell me what I am."

"He's powerful, don't get near him," Cassandra warned.

"I need to see," Serana answered. Cassandra rocked back on her heels and fidgeted. Visions of Vyrthur suddenly attacking paraded through her head. When Serana gasped, Cassandra nearly lunged forward. But the snow elf hadn't moved. "You're… you're a vampire?" Serana stuttered. "But Auriel should have protected you."

"The moment I was infected by one of my own initiates, Auri-El turned his back on me. I swore I'd have my revenge, no matter what the cost."

"You want to take revenge… on a god?" Serana asked.

"Auri-El himself may have been beyond my reach, but his influence on our world wasn't. All I needed was the blood of a vampire and his own weapon, Auriel's Bow."

Serana took a step back. "The blood of a vampire.. Auriel's Bow.. It… it was you? You created the prophecy?"

"A prophecy that lacked a single final ingredient… the blood of a pure vampire. The blood of a Daughter of Coldharbour."

Serana took a second step back and drew her knife. "You were waiting… all this time for someone with my blood to come along. Well, too bad for you… I intend on keeping it. Let's see if your blood has any power to it!" To Cassandra's tired eyes, Serana's hand moved faster than the eye could follow. For a moment it seemed as though she had two – three? – hands, all headed toward Vyrthur's neck.

The snow elf's senses, however, were not nearly as slow as the Dragonborn's. He stepped back with more than enough time to avoid the blow and then he raised a hand. An ice spike formed before his fingertips and then sped forward. It caught Serana in the side, ripping through leather armor, impaling her flesh, and spinning her half around with the force of impact. Cassandra threw her body forward, but Vyrthur already had another spike at the ready. It slammed into her ebony chest piece and knocked the Dragonborn backwards. She flew through the air until her back connected with the stone railing which, thank the Nine, held strong.

At Vyrthur's feet, Serana was kneeling and clutching at her side where the jagged ice still protruded. The setting sun was behind him and Cassandra had to squint to see what was going on while she attempted to struggle to her feet. Her armor was heavy, she was slow, and Vyrthur seemed to be an eternity away. A knowledge of doom settled in the Dragonborn's stomach. Vyrthur was holding Serana up by the collar of her armor – he was one of the maniacs of the sort who liked to talk – and Cassandra could do nothing because even if she had the power left to sprint, she'd never be able to close the distance. Gods, what could she do?

The amulet of Talos was a weight in her pocket.

She pulled the trinket out gingerly, afraid to drop it. The brass, highly polished by the constant rubbing of fingers, shone brilliant in the evening sun. When Cassandra was sure of her grip and sure of her aim, she yelled, "Vyrthur!"

The Arch-Curate obeyed that deep instinct and responded to his name, looking over at where the Dragonborn had fallen. A second was all Cassandra needed to point the beam of reflected sunlight into the vampire's eyes. He hissed and recoiled and in that moment Serana stood and lashed out.

Vyrthur's neck exploded in a spray of bright arterial blood.

The snow elf collapsed. Almost as if he didn't understand what was happening, he raised a hand to his throat and then looked at his bloodstained palm. "Auri-El… forgive me…" The Arch-Curate slumped.

Cassandra carefully sat down. The world spun around her on a tilted axis and she had to throw out a hand to steady herself. Serana's voice drifted in through the confusion.

"Cassandra, Cassandra, are you okay? Your head – I – you – what's wrong?"

"I… uhm… I'll be fine," the Dragonborn said. "I'm just dizzy. Happens when I get hit on the head sometimes, sometimes. Happened before. I'll be fine."

Cassandra's world was still spinning when Serana leaned forward and threw her arms around the mortal woman in an embrace, and then the axis shifted and the world was spinning differently. "You worry me so much," Serana mumbled. "What would I do without you?"

"It's only fair," Cassandra said, glad that the heat in her face from exertion was hiding her blush, "You worry me all the time too."

Serana let out a laugh. "But now we've won and it's over… Cassandra, I-

The words were still in her mouth when the balcony began to shake.

"You just had to say something," Cassandra muttered. "This bow had better be worth it." She couldn't stand but she held her club at the ready anyway. "Had better be worth it…"

The flagstones of the balcony began to rise up, and to the women's relief, formed a wayshrine. It wasn't a sure thing, but it seemed unlikely that there would be another enemy locked away in one of Auri-El's hidden wayshrines. The assumption proved correct when Knight-Paladin Gelebor stepped out of the shrine.

"So, the deed has been done. The restoration of this wayshrine means that Vyrthur must be dead and the Betrayed no longer have control over him." The snow elf seemed to almost purposefully look everywhere except his brother's body.

The tension finally ebbed from Cassandra's body and she relaxed her grip on her weapon. "It wasn't the Betrayed who did it."

"Vyrthur was a vampire," Serana explained. "One of the initiates turned him."

"A vampire?" For some reason, Gelebor didn't sound very surprised. "I see. That would explain much. Deep inside, it brings me joy that the Betrayed weren't to blame for what happened here. Because that means there's still hope that they might one day shed their hatred and learn to believe in Auri-El once again. It's been a long time since I felt that way and it's been long overdue. My thanks, to both of you. You risked everything to get Auri-El's bow, and in turn you've restored the Chantry. I can't think of a more deserving champion to carry it than you. If you wish to learn more about the bow, or obtain Sunhallowed Arrows for it, I'd be more than happy to help. You've but to ask. Please, take the bow… it's yours." He finished his rambling speech with a sweeping gesture to indicate the weapon on the pedestal within the wayshrine.

Serana helped Cassandra up again and they approached the bow together. It was clearly elven in make, but the golden metal radiated light and bathed the interior of the shrine in a soft, divine, glow.

Pride tinged Gelebor's voice, "The bow was said to be carried by Auri-El himself into battle against the forces of Lorkhan in ancient and mythic times. It's craftsmanship has no equal anywhere within Tamriel and possibly beyond. The bow draws its power from Aetherius itself, channeling it through the sun."

When Cassandra grasped the bow, something about the weapon felt right in her hand. "Thank you Gelebor," she said. "We'll put it to good use."

"Of that I have no doubt," he answered.

Cassandra swept her eyes over the shrine. "Does one of these stone arches turn into a portal that will take us back?" No sooner had the words left her mouth than the wall right in front of her shimmered and formed into the image of the cave they'd begun their journey in. "Answers that question… let's go, Serana."

The vampire started guiding her friend toward the portal but then stopped. She turned to face Gelebor again. "Do you think the Betrayed will ever be cured?"

"I feel nothing but sympathy for the Betrayed, despite my actions against them." Gelebor shook his head. "But I'm afraid that they're well beyond a cure at this point. The twisted forms you've seen didn't occur overnight. It isn't a plague or a disease that ravaged our species. The dwarves may have stolen their sight, but it took many generations for them to become what they are today."

"So there's no hope?" Serana asked.

"Perhaps they'll never return to their former appearance, but over the centuries, I've noticed a rise in their intellect. If a line of communication could be established with them, maybe they can find peace. It's the only way they'll discover that they weren't always malignant… they were once a proud and prosperous race."

Serana nodded. "Thank you."

As the sun set on the horizon, the vampire and the Dragonborn stepped through the portal to leave the vale and return to their quest. 

* * *

A/N: If you got this far, thank you!

Also if you got this far, I'd really love it if you just dropped a review or something saying you did, because I'm curious.

And if you have any questions or nitpicks about the fic, I'll totally respond, probably apologizing for my oversights and lack of skill, because like I said up top, anything and everything beats reading Foucault.


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